[mpiwg-tools] MPI_T usage question: other sensors

[Jeff Squyres (jsquyres)]

We talked briefly in the meeting last week about using MPI_T to gather non-MPI information, such as temperatures, fan speeds, CPU counters, ...etc.

I was originally in favor of such things, but I think I got talked down by the argument of "it seems like there are already other tools to do this; why would we [also] expose these kinds of values through MPI_T?"

Which I think I agree with.

But I had a thought on the way home from Chicago as to why we would want to do this: using a single tool to gather these values could give a more consistent set of numbers. I.e., if you're gathering all the values through a single interface (e.g., MPI_T) you can get a consistent view of *all* sensor values, to include MPI introspective sensors (average queue depths, number of sends, ...etc.).  If you're using multiple tools to gather these values, there's variability introduced by using multiple difference interfaces, each with different costs of reading values, etc.

Is this a worthwhile observation?  Or should MPI_T just stick to gathering MPI-related information?

-- 
Jeff Squyres
jsquyres at cisco.com
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